


Domesday

by Swabilliant



Series: Domesdayverse (Major Stories) [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28613652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swabilliant/pseuds/Swabilliant
Summary: A man named Maxwell, living in his car, stumbles upon the catalyst for humanity's jump to space.
Series: Domesdayverse (Major Stories) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096655





	1. Intro

In the low-light, specters glitter off foggy fields beyond the curbs that frame the street which speeds by, below and off behind the moving car. The honest reflection of the right hand mirror tells Maxwell that he’s passing by the industrial complex now, but he has his inner suspicions regardless. He knows it is night time, but the blistering shafts of light from the nearby airport thrust into the sky with such fervor as to light the land as if it were simply dusk again, though now the moon hung high in the sky, shining some light of its own, and the sun was nowhere to be found. As if reality itself was trying to convince him, the 8-segment clock on the dashboard read “02:34 AM” during his first glance down, and persisted into his second and third, which he performed simply to ensure it was truly the case that he had been driving for 16 hours.  
Parking in an undeveloped lot off the outskirts of town, he lowered his head, which brought a rush of relief to his tired neck, and as he made the back seat of the small four-door car back into his own personal resting place, he quietly wished he wouldn’t stay up so late tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A man named Maxwell, living in his car, stumbles upon the catalyst for humanity's jump to space.

The striking rays of the dawn warmed Max, first to a boil and then to a wake. Though it was winter, in temperature at least, his car functioned as a sort of low-grade oven when the sun beat upon it, which Max estimates may be because of the black paint which his car is finished with. As soon as he woke up, he was warm and itching, so he cracked the door to his left, (for he had been laying with his head to the right side of the car, and so when he sat up from sleep he was sitting on the left.) In the steadily increasing light of the morning, he could make out more details about the lot where he had parked. It appears to be the lot of an old abandoned store, rather than a wholly undeveloped one as he previously thought. He had noticed a short trench between the lot and the road last night, and a pile of stuff at the bottom of it, next to which was a rusty stator from an electric motor. The curb where he had pulled in was worn away, or more likely destroyed by someone to make this new entrance across the short ditch separating the road from the lot, which had also been filled in partially with gravel and dirt. The storefront, to the right of the car which Max was now standing outside of, had smashed in windows patched with cardboard, and light graffiti gracing the front wall on the outside. A large sign was erected to the right of the building, but whatever it once said had faded, perhaps by the sun bleaching the material, or by vandals looking for material, or seeking a thrill. Skeletons of dead bushes wrap the right corner of the front of the building, where the windows are mainly intact, though covered in trails of water spots, undoubtedly from heavy rainstorms over the years. 

Max turned around, and behind him there were stalks of dead trees with a few stumps ground into the earth to make a clearing, as if for small vehicles to traverse through the wall of what was once foliage. A little bit beyond the opening, there was an unoccupied house made of brick, with a splintering and sagging grey roof. Behind the house, or to the right from Max’s perspective, there was a railroad track, and further down the track a large hill supporting the road which he had driven on to get to this lot. Under the bridge there was a smoldering remnant wafting a light smoke into the air, perhaps from a campfire recently extinguished. Max hadn’t noticed any firelight coming from below the hill when driving over it last night, which means it was probably a very recent fire indeed.

Wandering alongside the track to investigate, Max noticed something else upon drawing closer: the side of the hill, though the weeds and non-natives were laying dead from the wintery cold, there ran a complex of strawberry vines, the whole length up and down the hill, with many running vines reaching both up the wall which stood below the road bridge across the tracks, and towards the railroad itself and across the barren dirt which lined either side of it. Max lamented, in advance, the death of any strawberry vine which might wrap over the track, as trains do still sometimes use tracks, and would surely sever any plant which lay beneath their path. 

Maxwell never considered himself the thieving type. However, the bag left behind by whoever made this fire was clearly abandoned, perhaps due to weightiness. There was an increasing number of vagrants recently, many of which traversed on foot and many on pedal bikes, since gasoline increasingly became scarce. In fact, Max couldn’t afford gasoline at its current price, which would be unfortunate were it not for the fact that he modified his car to operate off of a set of large electric motors which he plundered from wrecked luxury electric cars, which were hidden away in an abandoned dumping site further down the road from this spot. 

Assuming the bag was indeed abandoned by a foot nomad due to weight or perhaps disinterest, Max walked up to it, as it rested against the faux brick wall to the left of the railroad track. It was a canvas type bag, a military one, or perhaps an imitation. Though it normally shut by means of magnetic snaps, the cover was ajar due to the bulkiness of what was inside, which was wide enough to stretch the bag beyond the point of closure. The biggest object inside was an electric vacuum motor, green with many wires protruding from it, and a D-shaped shaft output for the rotation, with a click-button locking mechanism, presumably to attach something to it. Further down inside the bag, there was a modified armature, with magnets placed at regular intervals around it, totalling six. Testing them with the compass he keeps handy upon his waist belt, Max confirmed they were alternating north and south sides. The final detail he noticed on the armature was the presence of a D-shaped hole in its center, with the resulting hollow shaft running perpendicular to the overall longest side of the object. Obviously, he slid the thing onto the motor, and it fit, and it clicked into place. The magnets almost reached the outside of the motor, falling shy by only about two centimeters or so. Upon observing this fact, Max noticed the fact that there were seven evenly spaced holes around the outside of the motor. 

Setting the assembly down, he searched inside the bag. There was a roughly cubic wooden box with a sliding lid, with the symbol for pi engraved and burn-marked on the top. Removing the lid, Max revealed the contents to be a couple computer boards, or perhaps from small electronics. To their side there was a very old looking piece of paper, which he carefully removed and unfolded. It was a bizarre size, nonstandard, but rectangular. On it was scrawled some rough sketches of an assembly, which included a motor similar to the one max found, a modified armature, and a stator which slid onto seven evenly spaced sticks which were placed into the holes of the motor. The drawn stator looked to be a similar size, relative to the motor drawn next to it, to the one Max noticed earlier in the ditch. 

  
  


The drawing included, too, a web-like depiction of copper wire wrapped around the sticks in a constant pattern, which turned into a circular (or rather, heptagonal,) coil at the bottom. Arrows indicated the weaving of the wire and the sticks were to be placed onto the motor, above the stator and containing the armature, which Max assumed was to rotate and induce current in the wire, for reasons he did not yet understand. 

He placed the partial assembly into the bag, along with the note and box, and picked the bag up by the strap, and slung it carefully on his shoulder, as it was very heavy. Performing one last check behind him, he walked back to the car, and placed the bag down against the wheel. 

Pitter-patters of light snowy slush droplets flicked against the sides of Max’s car. He figured he should probably take shelter, but didn’t want to be cramped in the car- he would instead set up the tent-like solution he had come up with using nothing more than a common tarp and some long branches he custom whittled to this express purpose. There were slots in the thickest ends of the two branches, which held themselves in place on the roof rack mounting points of his vehicle. They reached forth, allowing him to use an elastic cord to affix a tarp to them, creating a roof. He used a large mesh fabric to create pseudo walls within which he stoked a Dakota fire hole. 

Settling onto a cut log he rolled over to act as a seat, he placed a metal grate and a stainless steel pot over the fire, and began to heat water he had filtered from melting snow to a boil. The steam warmed his hands, and he dumped into the rolling water an assortment of dried vegetables from the past harvest season, which he had taken from various existing vegetable patches in his travels.

As they boiled, he removed a large crystal of salt from an old pill bottle, crushing it with the bottom of the plastic container, and sweeping the resulting powder around on a plastic plate. After they were done, he used a fork to carefully remove each morsel from the water, and roll them lightly in salt, following which he would eat them in careful bites, trying not to burn himself. 

Simplistic meals were the best. As you add complexity to a dish, it becomes harder to understand as you taste it. Maxwell enjoyed the simple things. In simplicity there is beauty, almost as much as there is within complexity- though he often found complex things confusing. Simplifying one’s life is easy when you start out- reduce your meal options to a few things. Keep only one type of sock- no mismatches can occur then. Live simply, and minimally- with few belongings. Just enough to fit in a car, or two or so bags. It made things easier and predictable. 

However, the longer you attempt to lead a simple life, the harder it gets. Things change all the time, and not everything can be controlled. Existence is a hectic dance between the sentient and the inanimate. 


End file.
